


Paralysis

by incredibly_cold



Series: The Hamfam goes to college [7]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Casual Ableism, Fear, Gen, Hallucinations, Helplessness, Mild Horror, Paranoia, Powerlessness, but sleep paralysis is kind of freaky, it ends up being kind of cute, kind of, sleep paralysis, some freaky humanoid monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 02:40:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7783594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incredibly_cold/pseuds/incredibly_cold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John suffered from sleep paralysis. He'd been dealing with it for a while, and sometimes that made it easier, but being easier wasn't the same as it being okay. He wished it would just stop. He'd do anything for it to stop. But, sooner or later, he always had to go to sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paralysis

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so there is a scary humanoid monster creature in this. If that kind of thing freaks you out, then I wouldn't recommend this.

John could still remember the first time that it happened. He'd woken up very suddenly from a dream he couldn't remember. He didn't have a clue what might have caused him to jerk so suddenly out of his sleep, and especially he didn't know what it was that could have caused such an intense fear. He could feel his heart thumping rapidly in his chest, and tried his best to slow it. That was fairly easy since he had no memory of whatever had scared him. Once he'd calmed back down, he decided to just roll over and go back to sleep. Only when he tried to roll over, it didn't work.

At first he assumed that it was one of those things where he was half-conscious and he just thought he'd rolled over, but he really hadn't. Then he tried it again. Again, nothing happened. He tried very deliberately to lift his right shoulder and roll onto his side. Nothing. His body was not responding to what he was trying to do. It was full body paralysis. He was trapped.

The panic had set in so quickly that he didn't even have time to try to stop it. He couldn't move. He was totally helpless right now, and it was terrifying. He'd never been immobilized like this, even when he was his most injured.

His roommate Michael was in the bed on the other side of the room, and he tried calling out to him, only to find that his voice wasn't working either. He tried again, and before long his attempts at saying his name just turned into attempts to scream or do anything at all, but still nothing happened.

He had no idea how long he stayed like that, terrified and helpless, trapped in his own body. Finally, after what felt like hours, he managed to twitch his shoulder. After that, his full range of motion returned pretty quickly, and he wiggled around for a minute, enjoying the freedom, before he just lay on his back and breathed deeply. As it turned out, that was a mistake.

Within seconds, he felt a warm rush go over his body, like someone had just swept over him with a burning stick, and he felt heavy. He fidgeted uncomfortably, or he tried to, but he found that once again he was immobilized. He started breathing in fast, panicked gasps, and this time jerked out of it quickly. Instead of trying to catch his breath though, he got up as soon as he could move, slipped on his shoes, and left the dorm.

John ran as fast and as hard as he could across the campus, taking in the feeling of the cool air on his skin, and the way his muscles moved when he told them to. It felt heavenly after his brief experience with being so completely and utterly powerless. He wanted to do something, go somewhere, so that he wouldn't have to sleep. He didn't want to go back to bed, not after that. He decided that the best thing to do was to go to Hercules and Marie's apartment. Hercules had just recently moved in with his french boyfriend, and both of them tended to be very caring and understanding when John was upset. They might be a little annoyed with him barging in at this hour, but he was sure that once he explained it they wouldn't mind.

It was a decently long walk, which gave him time to appreciate his ability to move again. He even loved the stairs, which would usually be at least a little annoying since he was so tired.

Marie had given John a key only the week before, telling him that he could come over any time that he liked, and as he unlocked the door, John wondered if any time would include two o'clock in the morning. Not that it really mattered now, since he was already here. He flipped on he light in the living room and waited to see if that would be enough to wake them. It wasn't, so he opened and shut the door again, a little more loudly.

It only took a couple of seconds for Hercules to burst out of their shared bedroom with what looked like a shower curtain rod, ready to fight off the mysterious intruder. He stopped when he saw who it was.

"John? What are you doing here?"

Before he could answer, he heard Lafayette whispering very loudly from around the corner. "Who is it?"

"I'm sorry. I know it's late, I just had to go somewhere," John explained. Talking would also answer the question of who he was.

Hercules was still sleepy, and he looked more baffled than worried like he usually would be. "Did something happen? It doesn't look like anyone beat you up." It was a fair observation, since that was a pretty common occurrence.

"I don't know what happened. I couldn't move or talk, and I just had to get up and go somewhere so I don't fall asleep again," he explained. It felt inadequate, but he genuinely had no idea what happened, so he couldn't put a name to it. "I tried to scream, but I couldn't do anything," he added weakly. He felt pathetic.

Marie rubbed his eyes and wrinkled his nose. "Have you been taking drugs?" he asked sleepily. "I know shaming you isn't helpful, but that's a bad decision even for you."

"I'm not on drugs!"

"Did anyone slip you drugs?"

"Marie, this doesn't have anything to do with drugs!"

The other man shrugged and yawned. "Fine, no drugs. What happened then? Were you sleeping, or doing some other thing?" He asked. It didn't seem that helpful, but at least they were getting somewhere instead of throwing out accusations of drug use. It was a slight improvement.

"Sleeping."

"I think I know what that is then, but I don't know what it's called. Not in English, anyway. It isn't harmful though," he told him.

They did some checking on google, something that hadn't occurred to John before in his state of panic, and found that it was called sleep paralysis. It was indeed harmless, which made him feel a little better. Much of that relief was negated, however, by the fact that there was no definite cause or cure. He could only hope that it wouldn't become a regular occurrence for him.

Without asking permission from his boyfriend, Lafayette offered to let John sleep in their bed. Feeling a little childish, he accepted before Hercules could object. He'd never really imagined Marie doing anything so strangely maternal, but at the moment he was terrified and wanted to feel that kind of protection. He ended up between them, Hercules with his back to him because he couldn't stand other people breathing in his face, and Marie cuddled into his side with a hand on his chest. That seemed a little close for him, but the other man insisted that it was necessary, so that he would wake up if John's breathing changed because he was in sleep paralysis again.

It didn't happen another time that night, and obviously he couldn't do that any other night, so he knew that from then on he would have to handle it himself if it happened again. And of course, it did.

* * *

Sleep paralysis became a regular thing. Sometimes he could stay calm, knowing that it was a normal thing and it would pass. Other times he couldn't fight the fear and panic. The worst part was being unable to speak, because he felt like if he could call out to Michael, then his roommate could turn the light on or shake him and snap him out of it. But he couldn't do anything at all, and he tried to just be thankful that he didn't suffer from the hallucinations that were so commonly associated with the phenomenon.

As if in punishment for not being grateful enough, the hallucinations started. John was terrified of spiders. It was the way that they moved, he found it unsettling. So naturally, his first hallucination was a spider. It was massive, at least as large as his hand, and it's spindly legs each had three knobby joints so disturbingly similar to human fingers. It crawled toward him slowly, menacingly, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn't get way. When he finally snapped out of it, he wasn't sure if he had imagined the spider, or if it had just gotten away.

It became an almost nightly event, and he was afraid to go to sleep. He said nothing to Hercules and Marie, and let them believe instead that it had been a one time thing. It was horrible, and he could feel himself getting steadily worse. He was usually depressed, but it got to the point where all he could think of from waking up to going too sleep was how easy it would be to stop all this fear and anxiety if he just died.

Luckily, the incidents gradually became less frequent. For the next year or so, they occurred with varying frequency and severity. Even when his roommate graduated and he was alone in the dorm, he still felt the need to cry out to someone for help. Then, Alex moved in.

It had been almost two months since anything had happened. Alex had been around for almost that long. John had drifted off while Alex typed a paper. The rhythmic clicking of the keyboard lulled him to sleep, even though the light was still on. He wasn't really sure how long he was asleep, but he already knew it was happening as soon as he woke up. This time, he was terrified. He looked at Alex helplessly through his half lidded eyes, and struggled uselessly to say something. He knew it wouldn't work, but there was nothing else he could do.

It was like every time he tried to talk or scream or do anything during sleep paralysis. The most he could manage was to breathe like he was to make a very faint whining noise. More like a wheezy breathing really, hardly a noise at all. But it was enough. Alex looked over at him. He seemed confused, which was fair, and John longed to just tell him to wake him up. He tried, of course, but the wheezing was really all he could manage. He couldn't even move his lips.

"John?" He sounded concerned, uncertain.

John tried to do something, but still nothing.

"Are you okay?" He asked, after a few seconds without an answer. And then again, "Are you awake?" Then suddenly, he got up and started to try to move him. It was enough to jerk John out of it.

Now that he was able to move, he immediately grabbed onto Alex and held him tight, which only confused the other man more. He didn't try to get out of it though, just let John hang onto his waist and breathe in ragged gasps while he tried to calm himself down enough to speak. It took a minute or so, although he did hang on a little longer just because it felt nice. Then he let him go.

"Sleep paralysis," he said, not sure if so simple an explanation would actually be helpful.

It wasn't. "What? Are you okay, it looked like you were choking or something."

"I'm okay I guess," he started, "but I was in sleep paralysis, I wasn't choking. Thank you for moving me."

"Well I mean I thought you were choking, so I was going to do the Heimlich or whatever. Sorry for trying to squeeze the shit out of you when you weren't choking." He laughed uneasily, clearly not comfortable with the situation.

"Have you ever heard of sleep paralysis?"

"No."

Not surprising. It seemed like most people hadn't. "Okay, well basically your brain wakes up, but whatever keeps you from moving while you're asleep so you don't hurt yourself doesn't register that. So you're fully conscious but you can't move or talk, which would just be a hassle, but it pretty much always comes with overwhelming terror and sometimes hallucinations. You can't move to wake yourself up, so you just have to wait it out. It can take a few seconds or sometimes hours. Sometimes if you don't move around enough when you get out of it, then you slip right back into it." he explained. "I've never had anyone around to wake me up before. Well, at least no one who actually noticed that anything was happening, so thank you."

"God, that sounds terrible. That happens to you a lot?" It was nice that he wasn't being judgmental. Not that he'd have had a right to be. John was just used to people like his dad, who would have thought that he was doing it to himself somehow, and he could stop it if he just tried hard enough.

It was weirdly nice being able to talk to someone. He knew that it wouldn't help, and that there was literally nothing to solve this problem, but at least now he wasn't keeping it a secret. "It used to be every day, but now it happens a lot less. This is the first time in a while, actually. Sorry for freaking you out, but I'm glad you were here."

"Yeah, me too. So if it happens again, I should shake you if you start breathing weirdly?"

It was more hope than he'd had regarding the situation since it started. Maybe it wouldn't save him every time, but it was something. "Please. I know there are things where it's really bad to wake people up from, but this isn't one of them. I'm already awake, I just need something to make me wake up physically. That would be so nice to know that if you're here and awake, then I might not be trapped like that."

"Of course, yeah. I'll try to listen for that."

"Thank you Alex."

"Do you want to do something? You know, to move around so it doesn't happen again. We could walk around campus," Alex offered.

John was surprised. "You'd do that?"

"Well yeah, we're friends," he answered simply. And then, with a nervous kind of uncertainty, "We are friends, right? I mean sometimes I just kind of assume things, and I just figured that since we were living together..."

Seeing how flustered he'd gotten, John couldn't help but think how Alex was actually really damn cute. "Yeah, I mean definitely we're friends, for sure," he stumbled over his words embarrassingly. He wasn't going to keep letting himself notice how cute he was. He'd had a crush on a friend once before, and it had went wrong on so many levels. He wasn't doing it again, even on someone who saved him from being paralyzed and helpless for who knows how long, and was willing to take a break from writing an important paper to go on a walk with him in the middle of the night.

* * *

The incidents continued to be infrequent, thankfully, and by the end of the term, Alex had only had to wake him up twice. That's not to say that it didn't happen more than those two times, but on the other occasions his roommate was out or asleep, and couldn't really be faulted for not helping. As finals came closer, and stress levels rose, they became more frequent again.

John was on his side, facing Alex, who had fallen asleep at the desk between their beds. It seemed like he never fell asleep in his actual bed these days. Normally being able to at least see that someone was close by was a small comfort. Tonight however, he felt more afraid than ever. He had no idea why, since there weren't any giant spiders or anything, but he just couldn't shake the feeling that something really bad was about to happen.

Then he saw it. A small movement in the shadows of the doorway, where the blue light of his roommate's open laptop didn't quite illuminate. There was something there. He had to warn Alex, to tell him that someone else was in the room, but as usual, he couldn't move. He tried to do his loud, wheezing breath, but it wasn't enough noise to actually wake him up. He kept his eyes fixed on the shadows by the door, and saw a figure emerge. It was impossibly tall and thin, hunched over so it didn't hit it's head on the ceiling. Each of it's legs had two knees instead of one, so that it's legs bent unnaturally. He could see glistening wet skin, and two empty holes where eyes should have been. John was trying to scream so that Alex would at least know that something was wrong, but no sound would come out. The creaturegot down on all fours, making it the height of an average person, and started to scuttle forward toward Alex.

John was screaming. There was no sound coming out, but his brain couldn't do anything else. He wished that it would come for him instead. Surely any torture it could inflict on him would be better than this. This was hell. He was trying to tell the monster to just leave Alex alone, that he was innocent and it should take John instead, but of course he couldn't say any of it, or even mouth the words, so it was useless. He watched helplessly as it reached out a slimy clawed hand and wrapped it around Alex's throat.

The hoarse cry that suddenly ripped from his throat was startling even to himself, and before he'd even registered that he was able to move again, he was on his feet, throwing himself between Alex and the horrible monster. There was a surprised yelp behind him, and the distinct sound of someone almost falling out of a rolling chair, then cursing. The thing was gone. Of course it was gone, it had never really been there at all.

"Shit John, are you okay?" Alex asked groggily from behind him.

Slowly and shakily, John turned around. He wasn't ready to talk yet, he doubted he could get out any words, so instead he nodded silently and sat back down on the bed.

"Dude, you're crying," his roommate switched on the desk lamp. "What happened just now? I mean I'm guessing sleep paralysis, but what happened?"

Was he crying? He wasn't even aware of it, but now that Alex had pointed it out, he could feel the cold tear tracks on his face. He stared somewhere off to the side of Alex, not quite as low as the ground, but below his eye level. His eyes were still wide, and he couldn't seem to make himself blink like a normal person. Instead of answering, he started smoothing his hair back over and over again, like that might somehow help him.

"John?"

He finally looked over and felt more panicked tears flowing from his wide, unblinking eyes. He managed to stop smoothing his hair, though now he just was twisting and pulling a lock so hard that it hurt. He watched the other man reach toward him and then stop himself an few inches away.

"Can I touch you?"

He nodded, and as soon as Alex had sat down on the bed beside him, John had grabbed him and clung to him tightly. Alex didn't say anything, or try to wiggle out of it, he just rubbed a hand over his back soothingly.

It took a while for John to be able to speak. He didn't want to say anything until he was sure he could keep his voice steady. "I thought it was going to kill you," he said after a while. "I was going to watch it kill you, and I couldn't do anything to stop it." There was silence between them for several seconds. "I'm sorry that I scared you like that."

"No, it's fine, you can't help it." Alex assured him. "I'm sorry that you had to go through that. I know I can't really stop it from happening, but is there anything I can do tonight that would help?'

John was tempted to ask him to stay and sleep with him. Alex had been willing to indulge him in that when he had a concussion, and there was a good chance that he would allow it now, but he was working on finals, and that was much more important. Besides, the chances of it happening again tonight when he had already been on his feet and moving around were slim. "I'll be okay now, I think. You probably need to keep working."

Alex nodded. "Yeah, but I was already asleep. I wouldn't have woken up if this didn't happen. If I stop now, I still wouldn't be getting any less done," he pointed out. "So don't just not ask because you don't want to bother me or something."

It was kind of funny, even though they hadn't met that long ago, Alex knew him so well. It made him realize that his roommate must actually care about him, if he'd made the effort to get to know him. His old roommate Michael had been little more than an acquaintance, so really knowing the person that you shared a dorm with was definitely optional.

"Can you just stay with me?" he asked quietly, like saying it loudly would make it a definite no.

Alex smiled at him, which did a lot to assuage his anxiety about being rejected. "We do share a room, you know, so I'm not leaving you regardless." And it was back. "If you mean you want me to sleep in this bed with you, then sure, I can do that." Gone again.

Of course, he still did get up. He'd fallen asleep with his clothes on, so now he switched his jeans for a pair of more comfortable pajama pants, and brushed his teeth. After that though, he climbed into the bed, which was really too small to have more than one person on it. John didn't mind, he'd gladly accept any excuse to cuddle up to Alex. He tried to nuzzle his face into his roommate's shoulder in a sneaky way, and either he succeeded or Alex didn't mind.

They fell asleep together like that. John felt safe. Even if he did go into sleep paralysis, then Alex could wake him up. They were touching, and he would be able to feel his breathing change. And again, they were touching, sleeping side by side for the first time where neither of them had a brain injury. It was more personal, and intimate, and it made him happy. John decided that right now, with Alex so close, he didn't think he minded sleep paralysis all that much.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it and tell me what you think! You can either comment or you can contact me at incredibly-cold.tumblr.com


End file.
